Surf City, NJ has a A safety grade (85/100) with a violent crime rate of 75 per 100,000, 79% below the national average.
Surf City's UCR row covers a small municipal population (1,333). Rates below are per 100,000 and sit next to NJ and U.S. averages.
Surf City, NJ carries a PlainCrime A safety grade with violent crime 79% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Surf City, NJ shows violent crime at 75 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 825.2 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 79% below the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade A from those rates. Figures are voluntary agency submissions joined to population denominators; incomplete coverage can move the number.
The verdict
Surf City earns an A safety grade: violent crime runs 79% below the U.S. average, placing it safer than most U.S. cities.
Based on 1 reported violent incidents in a population of 1,333. At this volume, one additional or one fewer report can shift the rate and letter grade noticeably; small-city crime counts are inherently more volatile year to year than large-city counts, so treat this grade as a data point, not a precise ranking.
Small-count caution
Surf City reported 1 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 1,333. At this volume one additional or one fewer report moves the per-100,000 rate noticeably, so the figure is better read as a data point than as a precise measurement, and year-to-year swings here are expected.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Surf City's 75.0 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Woodland Park (75.0), Point Pleasant (74.7), Hopatcong (74.7), Wallington (74.5). These are same-year agency submissions that pass the same completeness screen, not a claim that the cities have identical conditions. They make the cohort position above checkable against named records instead of a generic state average.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 90.9% of reported property offenses in Surf City, against a cohort median of 82.0%. The remainder is burglary (0) and motor vehicle theft (1). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 83.1 per 100,000 in 2020 to 75.0 in 2024 (-9.8%). The highest observed value was 158.5 in 2021 and the lowest 75.0 in 2024. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Position in the state cohort
At 75.0 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Surf City ranks 195 of 417 — above 222 of the 416 other New Jersey cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +10.1% against the cohort median of 68.1. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Property counts dominate Surf City's FBI UCR Table 8 municipal row. Per-100,000 rates use the reporting-year population on that row; cities that fail the completeness test stay out of rate rankings. A citywide figure rarely describes any single neighbourhood inside the municipal boundary.
Based on 1 reported violent incidents in a population of 1,333. At this volume, one additional or one fewer report can shift the rate and letter grade noticeably; small-city crime counts are inherently more volatile year to year than large-city counts, so treat this grade as a data point, not a precise ranking.
On a small municipal row, small denominators make rates sensitive to a handful of incidents. Figures are reported totals, not neighbourhood advice.
| Offense | Count | Rate /100K |
|---|---|---|
| Property Crime | 11 | 825.2 |
| Larceny-Theft | 10 | 750.2 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 1 | 75 |
| Burglary | 0 | 0 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 1 | 75 |
| Aggravated Assault | 1 | 75 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
| Rape | 0 | 0 |
| Robbery | 0 | 0 |
Lead series · fell across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · fell · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 1,203 | 83.1 | 1579.4 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 1,262 | 158.5 | 950.9 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 1,302 | 76.8 | 768 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 1,308 | 76.5 | 917.4 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 1,333 | 75 | 825.2 |
Surf City's crime figures on this page originate from Surf City Police Department's submission to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program.
This agency reports via NIBRS, the incident-based system that captures more detail per offense (multiple crimes per incident, victim/offender data) than the older summary counts.
Crime rates read differently at different scales, so these are the New Jersey cities closest to Surf City in population. Their populations run from 999 to 1,516, against 1,333 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
These New Jersey cities report the closest violent-crime rates to Surf City's 75/100K (same FBI UCR vintage rules; size peers above are excluded so the two lists stay distinct).
Micro-municipal read: Surf City's FBI UCR Table 8 row (2024) is the only source for the rates above.
With a small population base, per-100,000 rates amplify sparse counts. Incomplete submissions are excluded from rankings. See FBI.gov UCR for the raw Table 8 file.
Disclaimer (small municipal): small-base rates are especially easy to misread. Informational only - not advice. Source: FBI UCR Program.
Micro-municipal rate methodology for how Surf City's small municipal row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Surf City, NJ rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Every figure on PlainCrime is rendered directly from FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) source data, no number is typed in by an editor. Surf City is scored as a small municipal UCR reporter (1,333 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.